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“He’s too incompetent to deserve xcommunication! I should punish him by forcing him to soak in his own ink!” Pope Leo X (voiced by Matt Berry from Toast of London) is extremely angry with Leonardo da Vinci for dissecting corpses. “It makes me feel so nauseous!” Berry’s grumpy portrayal of the pope adds a touch of humor to an otherwise dull children’s film about the later years of Leonardo, created using a combination of stop-motion and hand-drawn animation. It’s rather tedious and unappealing, and seems like the type of “educational” movie that teachers would show in class on rainy days.
Stephen Fry provides the voice for the main character, without attempting an Italian accent. The script occasionally includes “per favore” and “grazie” to make up for this. The story begins in Rome in 1516, where Leonardo’s scientific investigations have caused problems with the pope. Leo X grumbles about why the artist can’t just stick to creating “pretty pictures”. In response, Leonardo decides to take up an invitation from King Francis I of France to become a part of his court.
Unfortunately, there is not a lot of plot after this point in Jim Capobianco’s script, who received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for Pixar’s Ratatouille. In France, Leonardo quickly sees that the young king is simply another self-absorbed and vain monarch. Francis approves of Leonardo’s plans for an “ideal city”, but only if there is a massive statue of himself displayed prominently. In reality, Francis is not interested in science or progress.
This allows Leonardo to have ample opportunity to inspect corpses and contemplate the larger questions of life: why do we exist? What is our purpose? These are typically the types of questions that children enjoy pondering, but at times the film feels as dull as one of the dead bodies. The animated and innovative thoughts of Leonardo never truly come to fruition; perhaps it’s due to the lackluster script or Fry’s unenthusiastic and elderly portrayal. It doesn’t help that he appears more like Father Christmas than a man of the Renaissance.
Source: theguardian.com
